Jesus tells us to pray “give us this day our daily bread,” but how does that work? Does it mean that we don’t have to work at all, just pray? And how do we make sense of the fact that sometimes the prayers of Christians for basic needs are not answered?

In this conversation, Pastors Philip and Eric discuss what it means to pray for “our daily bread” and why it is important for us to have the right context for this passage. When Jesus shared this prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, He was attempting to reorient our hearts to a bigger reality than our basic daily needs. He wanted us to see that we are beings created to be tethered to God, dependent on Him for our physical and spiritual nourishment. And so, praying for our daily needs is a natural extension of our created order. We can lift up our physical and spiritual needs to God with confidence that He cares.

They also took questions from the audience:

• How would Jesus’ original audience have understood the term “daily bread?” 4:22
• How do we pray this prayer in practice? 7:29
• Where is the line between praying for our daily bread and working for our daily bread? 9:07
• How much should we emphasize praying for the needs of others? 11:45
• Can we become overly concerned with the prayer needs of others? 14:57
• How do we make sense about the issue of Christians who pray for daily needs that aren’t met? 18:45

To watch the sermon for this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/rEns4q6ZYBs 

Questions for living the message can be submitted to 312-682-1888 or emailed to [email protected]